


Ice Cream Cone Catharsis

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May and Scar attempt to purchase ice cream. Naturally, this does not go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice Cream Cone Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "You know what I wanted to see more of? That's hella right. Mei◇Scar. Hit me up, Geecer."
> 
> For those of you unaware, the "◇" symbol, from the webcomic Homestuck, indicates that two people are moirails, somewhat similar to a combination of really close friends and siblings. People consistently neglect May Chang and Scar's relationship, and people also consistently neglect the fact that May's one of the few kids who kills people in the manga proper.
> 
> EDIT: God fucking dammit I forgot that AO3 is a complete butt about html tagging. The moirail symbol has been replaced for my AO3 readers. See, this is why I prefer LP in the first place, ugh.
> 
> EDIT II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: I also hopefully fixed the line break issue. Literally fuck AO3 at this point. I'm so damn tired of this interface.
> 
> This takes place sometime during Brotherhood shortly after the shindig with their arrival in Central.

“I’d like _that_ one,” said the twelve-year-old-looking girl, folding her arms across her chest and indicating the desired flavour of ice cream with a sharp nod of the head, “and in one of the cones with the square patterns on them.”

While the ice cream vendor’s eyebrows had elevated somewhere beyond her hairline, possibly fleeing her head entirely, the scarred maqn palmed a few cenz in his pocket. “Two scoops of chocolate chip mint in a waffle cone, and one scoop of vanilla in a sugar cone, please.” The girl blinked; the black and white creature on her left shoulder let out a noise not unlike a bark. A faint flicker rippled over the scarred man’s impassive face. The ghost of a smile bid the vendor draw back, wrapping the cones in napkins with trembling hands. “A scoop of one of the sorbets to the mint.”

The vendor flailed weakly. “Which one?”

The girl and the barking beast consulted one another silently, then turned to gaze at the vendor at the same terrifying instant. “Lemon, please.”

Before the vendor could protest, the scarred man had dropped the folded bills onto the tray and removed the ice cream cones from her grip. “Here,” he snapped gruffly. With a sound of glee the girl snatched the cone; her pet nearly _leaped_ onto the golden slush, licking the ice ferociously while the girl started on the mint, a springtime combination of green and yellow whose desecration left the vendor reeling from the knowledge that the scarred man did not attempt to mug her, or worse. Carefully she examined her cart yet found everything in its rightful place, not a cen filched or a topping disturbed. Although something _was_ disturbed: Staring at the grown man walking away with a young pink-swaddled girl happily chattering away, the vendor bolted for the nearest payphone on the far end of the park. She squinted, keeping the shrinking outlines within view. Her fingers closed around the receiver.

“Central police? I’m at Central Park, reporting a s-suspected kidnapping.”

 

“We would’ve gotten one for Dr Marcoh,” May Chang remarked as her soft footsteps whispered across the bridge. The line of Scar’s mouth firmed into a thin line, and May nodded. “I know, it’d melt. But we’ve got to get dinner, right? Heheh, Mr Scar, you’ve got a little dribble of white on your chin. Mmhm, right there.”

She wiped her sticky fingers on a kerchief that she put away into a slit weighed down an alkahestry point. Scar ran his sleeve over his lower face. “We will eat on the road tomorrow. We need to head north.”

“Mr Scar, I think it would be better to eat breakfast tomorrow morning and _then_ leave for the road, so we’re not travelling on an empty stomach.” The man regarded her from behind his pointed shades. She walked on a half-metre, recognised the silence of his lack of movement, and turned towards him. “Mr Scar?”

“Nothing.” His voice came as though from a far-off canyon. His memories hung almost tangibly in the evening near-dark with a heaviness May couldn’t name but could taste in the air, as if she could pluck his joy and grief from the branches of his recollections and bite down until juice sweetened her tongue and painted her chin. “You’re right.”

She cocked her head, and Xiao-Mei mirrored her motions. “Mr Scar? What are you remembering?”

Silence, thick and cool. They wandered on with both a specific purpose and a specific purposelessness, until a prickle of energy alerted her like a bird’s feather alighting in her hair. Tensing her muscles, May dropped the remainder of her waffle cone over the bridge railing, where it landed noisily in the waters below, and grabbed Scar’s sleeve. “Behind us,” she hissed quietly, calmly, “two, perhaps ten metres or so away.”

Xiao-Mei scrambled from her shoulder into her robe, nestling into the warm crevice of her chest. Rapidly, stealthily, Scar led her down the stretch of cobblestone. The shadows on the bridge’s underside welcomed them into their pitch embrace. May slotted her alkahestry points between her fingers, the metal breathing an icy certainty of her lethality into her skin. His hand on the railing, Scar squinted against the faint light of the rising crescent moon.

The shuffling of footsteps approached. In the Pulse she tracked their circular movements as if sweeping outwards from an epicentre; with her ears she heard them muttering to one another in tones of an urgent concern. Scar restrained her with a lifted arm. “They’re young, and members of the police. They would not have been in Ishval.” His lip curled. “They’ve never killed. Innocents.”

“They may still be hostile.” Xiao-Mei growled in agreement. May murmured a _ssh_.

“We’re leaving.” Scar gestured towards an unlit path under the bridge and across the river, cutting across the park and avoiding the passersby entirely.

Then a wisp of their conversation curled around her heart and squeezed: “ _Keep looking. Tall, white hair, brown skin. What kind of twisted freak could kidnap some five-year-old girl?_ ”

Scar and May’s gazes connected. A noiseless nod between them. Blue lightning snaking across the foundations of the bridge, shattering the supports, cleaving the arc of stone. Blades flashing silver-white arrows of judgment, connecting, slicing into their marks with a fatal precision. Screams, splashes, silence, thick and cool.

At length May shook her head, her braids sweeping her back. Xiao-Mei’s ears poked out from the collar of her shirt. “You didn’t need to collapse the bridge, Mr Scar,” she observed, examining the wreckage. “We’ll be in the papers.”

Scar shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. “Retrieve your weapons.”

“Mmhm.” The Pulse flowed around the alkahestry points’ slightly heightened lines of _chi_ , and the girl tugged them free from the carnage. She paused, if for a moment, to say a soft prayer to the ancestors, for the innocence sullied by her hand. Returning to Scar’s side, she nodded at the path he had indicated earlier. Once past what she considered a safe range, the edge of the park within sight, she glanced up at his somber expression. “So, what are we going to be eating for breakfast tomorrow, Mr Scar?”

Again his voice crashed into the cliffs of her hearing as the ocean’s powerful waves, no longer of memory but of low, roiling thought. “You may decide, Miss May.”

“Hm. What do you think, Xiao-Mei?” The panda replied by batting at her throat with a gentle paw, and May laughed. “I think Xiao-Mei wants something from home. I can cook! Make it a surprise.”

His thoughts widened and deepened, a once-dry riverbed brimming with rain. She caught his hand between her fingers and curled thumb in into his palm, an ephemeral surprise etched into his face. May smiled. Beamed. Waited.

The man bowed his head. “You remind me of someone I once knew.”

Her smile did not falter, but the corners of her eyes crinkled further, and she leaned forward slightly. “Of . . . ?”

His fingers skittered over his arm. His right arm. His tattooed arm, the intricate interlaced alchemy and alkahestry concealed under the beige-brown sleeve. “I have fallen, and I have no right to speak his name or disgrace his memory. Forgive me.” Words in a language familiar and yet utterly alien. Something like a song, half-sung under his breath. She traced circles over his knuckles while his breathing calmed and the tension in his form ebbed. “Forgive me.”

“I understand.”

“Miss May?”

Xiao-Mei perked up, reflecting May’s own spark of emotion. “Mm?”

“I apologise for the ice cream.” He hesitated; she squeezed his hand. “Could I purchase you another?”

May giggled when a hint of a curve twitched his lips. Her grin could outshine the sun. “You don’t have to.” Xiao-Mei whimpered pitifully. “But I’d like one. And could we get one for Dr Marcoh this time, too?”

Scanning the shops upon the street they entered, Scar started in the direction of an ice cream parlour still operating this close to midnight. “If you insist.”

“Only,” said May with a final lilt in her words, “because I know you secretly wanted to.”


End file.
